Starcrossed
by flowerchild3286
Summary: Payson and Sasha really are star-crossed lovers. Sasha's reaction to the events of Listen to the Universe will change everything.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: If I owned MIOBI then the last episode would have ended about a minute sooner than it did.

A/N: I could NOT just let things end the way they did in episode 6. I didn't try to undo it, I just… twisted it around a little bit :)

* * *

For the third time since coming to the Rock, Sasha was visiting one of his gymnasts in the hospital. At least it wasn't his fault this time, but it didn't make it any easier. It was funny, he'd always known that Lauren's heart was broken. He just didn't expect it to be literal.

The door to her room was cracked open, so he could hear her voice floating out. He was glad to note that she sounded happy. He'd expected her to be devastated, but maybe he wasn't giving her enough credit. She was a strong girl; she could overcome anything.

"So tell me everything I've missed," she was saying. "What's going on with Rigo?"

He was torn between knocking on the door to stop the conversation or running the hell away. He knew that name, Rigo. That was Payson's new boyfriend, the one Sasha wanted to rip limb from limb. But just as he settled on running away, Lauren said something that stopped him in his tracks.

"Oh my God, you slept with him didn't you?"

He was praying for a flat denial. What he got was a shocked "How did you know? I didn't even say anything."

"Please, Payson, I can read you like a book. It's written all over your face."

Something very strange was going on with Sasha's body. He was cold all over and he couldn't feel his fingertips; his head was spinning; he felt like he was going to throw up. He thought he might be having a stroke.

Payson was having sex. With her boyfriend. Rigo. Not Sasha.

Lauren's next words sounded like he was hearing them through water. "I can't believe you had sex. And _before_ the Olympics. What happened to waiting until you had a gold medal?"

"I fell in love," Payson answered.

It was his worst nightmare. Payson having sex with someone else he could handle, if only barely. He knew it would be that way; he couldn't ask her to wait for something that might never happen. But for her to be in love with someone else? He never thought that would happen and he couldn't deal with it. Somewhere in the back of his mind he always believed that they would be together in the end. It was naïve and sentimental, two things that he had never been before, and it would be his undoing. Killing that dream would kill him too.

While he was paralyzed, the girls continued their conversation. "So how was it?" Lauren asked.

He didn't want to know. What he wanted most in the world right now was to be somewhere else, anywhere else, away from the harsh reality that he'd lost Payson for good, but he couldn't move. He couldn't even support himself. He had to lean against the wall by the door to keep himself from falling down, so he heard Payson's response.

"I was _amazing_. Better than I've ever imagined. I mean, I've…" she trailed off significantly.

Lauren snorted. "Well, duh. Who hasn't?"

He shouldn't know something like that about Payson, and he didn't _want_ to know it about Lauren. Lauren was like a daughter to him, even though she was the same age as the woman he loved. The disparity in his relationship with the two girls reminded him anew of just how fucked up his feelings for Payson were.

"But what I felt with Rigo was a million times better. It was…" Her voice was rapturous, and she drifted off in a dreamy way, like she was too caught up in her memories to continue.

He fled. His legs were still too weak to walk so he stumbled like a drunkard, but he couldn't stay there. He couldn't listen to Payson rhapsodize about another man's love making. He couldn't stand by while she replaced him with someone else.

o-O-o

Everybody thought he was sick. It was a reasonable assumption; he looked like hell. How could he possibly explain the real reason?

He didn't know what to do. He couldn't stay at the Rock knowing that Payson was in love with someone else, but he couldn't leave either. He promised the girls that he would get them to the Olympics and he had to keep that promise. It was ironic; he had to leave because of Payson, but he had to stay because of her, too. Before he met her he wouldn't have hesitated to break his vow and leave. She made him a better man and that was torturing him. He wanted to drink himself into oblivion, but he couldn't do that, either. Payson wouldn't approve.

He was never going to get through the night. She wanted to redesign her floor routine, to show Coach Macintyre that she was more than just a safe choice, and that meant being alone with her for hours. It was a torture hand-tailored for him.

He didn't mean to bring it up. His plan was to bottle it all up inside, force himself through the next couple of months, and then get the hell out of Boulder as soon as the Olympics were over, but spending time with Payson brought him back to the days when he'd first fallen in love with her. Back before the kiss and the video leak, before things were awkward and people watched them like hawks, looking for the slightest indication of impropriety. Back when they talked about everything.

They were sitting on the floor together while he helped her stretch out her knee, laughing the way they used to in the beginning, and the words slipped out before he could stop them. "I heard you and Lauren talking today, in the hospital."

She didn't have to ask what he was talking about. "Sasha… I don't know what you want me to say here. I won't apologize for what I did. I'm glad I did it."

She wasn't even looking at him, but he couldn't take his eyes off of her. "I don't expect you to apologize. You didn't do anything wrong, I just… I don't even know why I brought it up. I shouldn't have."

"You're right. You shouldn't have." Her voice was like ice. He didn't know how to handle this Payson. She was different than the woman he knew. "You have no right to be upset because I slept with someone else. It's none of your business."

"That's not what I'm upset about," he snapped, letting her distant manner goad him into saying too much.

She glanced his direction for half a second. "Really? Then what exactly are you upset about?"

"You said you loved him." The words were whispered. He shouldn't have said them at all.

He surprised her enough to make her look at him, and he suddenly understood her coldness. She was trying to hide the pain, just like he was, but she was better at it. She whispered back. "I do."

She pressed her eyes closed and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again she was calm. Mostly. "Are we really talking about this? We never have before."

"We shouldn't be talking about it now," he said, hating himself for opening the wound. "There shouldn't be anything to talk about."

"And that's never going to change. It's not like we're going to wake up one day and it'll be okay for us to be together. If I showed up on your doorstep on my eighteenth birthday you would still turn me away, and you would still be right to do it. As much as I wish we did, we don't have a future together."

It was his turn to close his eyes and take a deep breath. He wasn't sure if he picked it up from Payson or if she picked it up from him. "I know. But I don't think I can hang around and watch you with someone else. I know that I have no right, but I hate that you're with him."

"He's good for me, Sasha. I don't know if what I have with Rigo will last, but he is good for me. I know that whatever we—" she motioned between them "—could have together _would_ last, but it's never going to happen, and I have to move on. I love Rigo, and being with him is helping me get over you."

He reached out a hesitant hand to stroke one finger down her the side of her face. "But who's going to help me get over you?"

She tilted her head so that her cheek was resting against his palm. Her eyes were streaming with tears, but there was no sob as she said, "I wish things were different."

"Me too, Payson." He pulled her in to lean against his shoulder and wrapped his arm around her. It felt so right but was so, so wrong. "Me too."

o-O-o

Wendy stopped the recording on her phone and slipped back through the shadows and out the back door. It wasn't until she was two buildings away that she allowed herself to stop and smile. The night had turned out so much better than she planned. She went to the gym to get proof that Payson was sneaking in and send it to Coach Macintyre, but this was so much better. Sneaking in would get Payson in trouble, but _this_… this would ruin her.

* * *

A/N: Probably a two-shot. A three-shot at the very most.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: You know the drill.

* * *

Payson was split into three. They were at a late afternoon practice, and part of her was wanted to stay and work, part of her wanted to be off in a cozy corner somewhere with Rigo, reminding herself why she loved him, and another part wanted to be with Sasha. Anywhere. Doing anything. She just wanted to be with him. That was the part of her that she was trying to ignore.

She'd been doing so well. She was moving on, learning to accept that she couldn't be with Sasha and believe that she could be happy with someone else, until last night. Spending time alone with him had opened up all of her old wounds, and finally talking about their feelings had almost destroyed her. She spent the whole night in Lauren's hospital room, unable to face Kaylie. Lauren just let her cry and didn't ask questions. It was exactly what she needed.

How was she supposed to face Rigo now? She loved him, but the guilt of her feelings for Sasha was weighing her down. She felt like she was cheating on Rigo with Sasha and cheating on Sasha with Rigo, which was ridiculous all around. She wasn't with Sasha and she never had been.

She was so lost in thought that she nearly jumped out of her skin when Wendy slid up beside her in the creepy way she had. Payson had been accused of lacking normal social skills a time or two, but Wendy took that to a whole new level.

"Hi Payson!" she said, with her unnaturally straight posture and ever-present smile. "I was just walking through the break area on the way back from the bathroom and someone left the TV on, so I couldn't help but overhear that they were talking about you on the news."

"What? What were they saying?" She didn't have any promotional stuff coming up that she knew of.

"Well, I didn't stop to listen," Wendy said, bouncing on her heels, "Because obviously I had to get back to practice, but I heard your name and Coach Belov's. Maybe they were talking about the Rock?"

Payson could only hope that the suggestion was true, but the sinking feeling in her chest said otherwise. It was too much of a coincidence that her name would be mentioned together with Sasha's while he was in town. It was much more likely that someone was trying to bring up the kiss again. She glanced at the clock: a few minutes past 6. What Wendy heard was probably just a teaser, so Payson could still catch the story. She swept past her teammate to the break room, ignoring Kaylie following her and Coach Mac yelling at both of them to get back to work.

She leaned against one of the tables in front of the widescreen and waited for the commercials to be over. In her peripheral she saw her friend and coach joining her, and Wendy, despite her insistence that practice was more important, followed as well.

The sports news was on first and it seemed never-ending, but they finally moved on. Payson groaned when a picture of her kissing Sasha popped up on screen. Why couldn't people let this go? Didn't anyone respect how painful and embarrassing this was for her?

"It's a modern day Romeo and Juliet," the female anchor said, "The story of two people kept apart by their circumstances. About a year ago this picture sparked a scandal, suggesting an illicit relationship between World Champion gymnast Payson Keeler and her coach, four time Olympic Gold Medalist Sasha Belov. A full video was later released which showed Coach Belov pushing Payson away from him, but new information shows that there might be more to the story."

She had no idea what they were talking about. Romeo and Juliet? And what new information could they possibly have?

The screen faded from the woman's face and into a video that Payson had never seen, but she recognized the situation all too well.

"Oh my God. How did they get this?" she asked, choking back tears. It was impossible. They'd been alone in the gym. She shouldn't be watching as the scene played out on television.

_She was lying on her back in the TC gym with her foot resting flat against Sasha's shoulder while he pushed her knee up toward her chest. _

"_Better?" Sasha asked as he placed her foot back on the floor and sat down beside her._

_She shook out her leg. "Yeah. You know, there's a lot I'm going to miss when I retire, but knee pain is not one of them. I'll be nice not to sit around with ice packs all the time."_

_They sat in comfortable silence for a few seconds until Sasha uttered the words that would change everything. "I heard you and Lauren talking today, in the hospital."_

She wanted to run away. The conversation had been hard enough to live through once. She didn't want to see it happen again, but she forced herself to be strong. To run away would be to admit that they did something wrong.

Tears slipped from her eyes when she heard her own cold reply. She'd been trying to protect herself from her own pain, but she didn't realize how much her words would hurt Sasha. The others watching the video wouldn't be able to see the pain in his expression, but she could.

She wouldn't let herself leave, but she couldn't watch either. She looked away. There were parts that she couldn't hear, when they were whispering, but the news crew had close captioned it, so everyone watching would know what they said. There were no more secrets.

Her tears were coming faster, so she pressed her lips tight together in a futile attempt to stem the flow. The video ended and the anchor spewed more crap about star-crossed lovers, and then there was silence. Someone had turned off the TV.

"Wow," Wendy said, way to cheerful for the situation. "I can't believe the rumors about you and Coach Belov are true. Is that where you slept last night?"

She turned to glare at her roommate. She was tired of all the backhanded complements and nosiness disguised as concern. "Go to hell."

"Wendy, go practice your triple twist," Coach Macintyre snapped, cutting off whatever response she'd been about to give. "If you don't clean it up I'm taking it out."

Payson was jealous of that triple twist—she hadn't been able to do one since she broke her back—but for once she didn't care about it. She was just thankful that Coach Mac had gotten rid of the girl.

"You got an agent, Keeler?" he asked with a surprising amount of sympathy. It was one thing he shared with Sasha; neither of them wanted to see their gymnasts get hurt.

She shook her head and fought down the lump in her throat. "No. My dad handles all the Healthy Bar stuff for me."

"I'll go call the NGO's PR man, then, and see what we can do to control this." He squeezed her on the shoulder on her way out, leaving her alone with Kaylie.

"Payson, I had no idea that you felt that way about each other. Why didn't you tell me?"

She turned to look at her friend. "Because we're not _supposed_ to, Kaylie. We're not supposed to feel this way. He's my coach! We weren't supposed to fall in love!"

Kaylie stepped back, shock clear on her face. "You… you love him?"

It wasn't fair to do this to Kaylie. Caught up in her own complicated love life, Payson forgot that her friend was still reeling from her break up from Austin. It wasn't fair to put her through even more.

"I have to go call Sasha," she said, and finally allowed herself to flee. She needed to tell him what happened and make a plan to handle it, but mostly she needed to hear his voice.

o-O-o

This was a disaster. The video was supposed to ruin Payson, not make people sympathetic to her. That idiot newscaster didn't know how to spin a story.

She even tried to salvage the situation by letting it drop that Payson hadn't slept in the dorm last night, but Coach didn't seem to care. Wendy was tired of the Rock girls getting special treatment. And that dig about her triple twist was uncalled for. She was landing it just fine, thank you.

She made sure that every girl in the gym knew that Payson was involved with her coach, dropping more than a few hints that they were sleeping together, before she sneaked away to make a phone call. That reporter was about to get an ear full.

She didn't bother with the usual sweet girl act. As soon as the woman picked up Wendy launched into a tirade. "Romeo and Juliet! Do you even have a brain? I did not send you that video to garner sympathy for them. It was supposed to be a scandal, not a stupid human interest story!"

"You have your agenda, I have mine." Public persona gone, the woman was sharp and calculating. "I don't care about your petty teenage vendetta. I care about numbers, and there are too many scandals out there already. The star-crossed lovers angle sells better. If you wanted me to do it your way then you should have got a contract."

"You stupid, selfish whore! If you know what's good for you, you'll fix this. Find a way to destroy Payson or I will destroy _you_."

"I don't think you'll be doing anything of the kind, Wendy."

Her blood ran cold. The words didn't come from the phone; they came from behind her, and it was Coach Macintyre saying them.

She spun around and hid the phone behind her back, plastering a huge smile on her face. "Coach Mac! That wasn't what it sounded like. I was just…" She trailed off, not knowing where to go with her excuse. She'd never been caught so red-handed before. She usually didn't do her own dirty work.

"I don't want to hear it. You're done here. Go get your things and I'll have Coach Kennedy escort you back to the dorms to pack."

"What?" This couldn't be happening. It was supposed to be the other way around. Payson was supposed to get kicked off, not her. "You don't understand. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I just thought that Coach Belov should be exposed, for taking advantage of Payson. I was trying to protect her."

He didn't buy it. "I have no time for girls who try to sabotage others, Wendy. I'm trying to form a gold medal _team_. Since you can't support your teammates you don't have a place here. Go collect your things."

She spun on her heal and walked away, head held high. This wasn't the end. Coach was trying to break her, but she was better than him. She was better than the Rock girls. The NGO would see that they made a mistake in hiring Coach Macintyre and come back to her begging. She _would_ be at the Olympics on that gold medal podium.

He whispered to Coach Kennedy when they got into the gym, and she followed Wendy to the locker room like she couldn't be trusted to clear out her locker by herself. It was infuriating, but not nearly as much as seeing Coach Mac taking her name off the board when she came back out. He turned to face the rest of the gym and yelled. "This is Olympic gymnastics, not a beauty pageant. Sabotaging you competition will not work for you here. So any of you who can't support your teammates might as well get out now."

Nobody volunteered to leave, of course, but they all stared at Wendy like she had the plague and might give it to them. Payson broke away from Kaylie and Jordan's attempts at conversation, and came to stand in front of her.

"It was you?" she asked. "You were the one who made that video and sent it to the news station?"

Wendy looked her square in the eyes. She wasn't ashamed of anything she did. Payson pressed on. "Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted, to hurt me?"

"I wanted you off the team, you imbecile. You don't deserve to be here. You're washed up. It should have been you that got cut, not me, but once again you get a spot that someone else deserves. But this is not over. You destroyed my dream, so I will do everything in my power to bring you down."

Payson was such a wimp. She didn't even try to fight back. She just said, "I didn't destroy your dream, Wendy. You did that yourself."

Wendy rolled her eyes as Payson turned and walked away. Stupid, naïve bitch.

o-O-o

Payson might never be able to look at a phone again. She made three of the hardest phone call of her life today, and she was starting to long for a time before technology. Telling Sasha about what happened was difficult, but he was so brave. He made her feel brave too, at least for long enough to call her mother.

Kim already knew. In the fifteen minutes between when the news clip aired and Payson called, seven people from the Colorado Springs area called her mom. By this time her grandmother in Minnesota probably knew. What was the worst thing for Kim to hear through the grapevine? That Payson was having sex? That she was in love with her coach? That he was in love with her, too? That thousands of people knew and millions more soon would? Payson and Sasha were both famous. This would go from local new to national news overnight. Kim put her concern for Payson before all her other feelings, but that wouldn't last forever. Eventually Payson would have to face the full force of her mother's disapproval.

Rigo had been the hardest call to make. He knew too. Someone in the dorm had been watching and called him in when her name was mentioned. It must have been so humiliating for him to watch her confess her feelings for someone else while all of his friends were around. She hated hearing the hurt in his voice, and hated even more that she couldn't fix it. There was no way to undo what had been done.

And she just kept hurting him. He came looking for her, so that they could talk it out, while she was holed up in a conference room with Sasha, Coach Mac, and a TC rep. They were trying to make a plan to handle the press, and someone must have assumed that Rigo was supposed to be part of the meeting, because they sent him in. It was a reasonable assumption, considering that his name had been mentioned a few times in the video, but it meant that he walked into the room while she and Sasha were sitting side by side, holding hands. The gesture had been unconscious. She needed comfort and Sasha gave it to her out of instinct.

Now she and Rigo were alone together, locked in yet another conference room. They'd been there for a full five minutes and neither had uttered a word. They just sat across from each other, looking at their knees. Rigo finally broke the silence. "What do you want to do?"

Her head snapped up in surprise. She expected anger and betrayal, but the question held neither. He was giving her a choice.

She decided on complete honesty. He deserved that much. "I don't know. I love you, but I love him too, and it's not fair to choose you just because I can't have him. I don't know what I want anymore. I need time to figure it out."

"I want to be with you, Payson. I'm willing to look past all of this because you're worth it, but I don't want to spend all of our time together waiting for the day you leave me for him. So just… make sure your choice is final, okay? It's either him or me; you can't have both." He kissed her once and left, but before he closed the door behind him he said, "Let me know when you make a decision. And just know… no matter what you decide, my feelings won't change."

He left her even more confused than she started.

o-O-o

Sasha was exhausted. The day had been hard enough, trying to forget the night before and reconcile himself to Payson moving on, but then she had called him in tears to tell him that there was a video of them together on the news. After that he'd spent hours trapped in a room while PR guys came and went, pretending to consult him and Payson while they made a plan to handle the media. All he really did during those meetings was comfort Payson.

He didn't care about what happened to him, he was planning to hide somewhere after the Olympics anyway, but Payson didn't deserve to be punished for his actions. If he'd had better control over himself this couldn't have happened. He should never have begun that conversation.

The video aired on the six o'clock news. By seven reporters were camped out in front of the TC gym. When they were finally free from the press meetings at ten o'clock they could barely get past the crowd outside the door. Someone had to escort Payson to her dorm while he fought his way back to his hotel. Now it was nearly midnight and he was halfway to drunk, but he could still hear them mulling around down below.

His phone buzzed. It'd been doing that all evening, but this time it was Payson's face that flashed onto the screen.

_I'm at the backdoor of your hotel. Come let me in._

Concern overrode his surprise. He had no idea how she got there, but it wasn't safe for her to stay outside. The longer she waited outside, the greater her chance of being seen.

They made their way back to his room by a back staircase, careful that nobody saw them. As soon as the door was locked behind him he asked, "How did you get here?"

"I walked," she said, like it was no big deal. "It's only a few blocks, and some of Lauren's sneakiness must have rubbed off, because I made it over here without anyone seeing me."

"Okay… then _why_ are you here?"

She stepped closer to him and placed her hands low on his abdomen. It was an innocent touch, but still more intimate than they'd ever experienced. She lifted her lips to hover just below his and whispered, "They're calling us Romeo and Juliet, but they at least got one night together. I want our night, Sasha. Just one night and I'll move on, but I can't spend the rest of my life wondering."

He had to push her away, but he'd been drinking, and it felt so right to have her this close, and, damn it, he wanted this night too. So when she pressed her lips to his he let her.

* * *

A/N: As usual, the story ran away with me. The conclusion will be posted tomorrow, before Monday rolls around and kills the fantasy. Lauren will have some very insightful things to say about the situation ;)

Did you see that ending coming?


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I'm not Holly.

A/N: This is by far the sappiest thing I've ever written. But that was kind of the point, right? I wanted to make myself feel better after Listen to the Universe, and this definitely did that :)

* * *

Making love with Sasha went beyond anything she could ever have imagined, because it was the culmination of a year's worth of love rather than just a few weeks. It felt _right_ being with him, like they were made to go together. It wasn't just about their bodies fitting together perfectly, even though they did. It was so much more. She'd never given much credit to the term, and under normal circumstances she would never have used it, but as she drifted off in the comfort of Sasha's arms, Payson thought they might be soulmates.

o-O-o

He woke to the pleasant weight of Payson's head on his chest. It was a temporary pleasure, one that he knew he wouldn't be allowed to enjoy again, so he reveled in the feeling. He would get as much of her as he could in their short time together.

He resented the time he'd spent asleep. He meant to stay awake, but he hadn't counted on the comfort of lying with Payson or the exhaustion of such an intense release of emotions. He'd fallen asleep without realizing it.

They had two more hours at most. She had to leave before the sun rose or she would never make it back to the dorms without being seen. He would spend every second of that time memorizing Payson—the feel of her body against his, the dimpled skin of her surgery scars, the way her eyelids fluttered in her sleep. No detail was too small.

The fluttering of her eyes grew more distinct until she opened them all together. It was one more thing to memorize, Payson balancing in the haze between sleep and waking.

Her words shattered his peace. "That was supposed to be a goodbye."

"Supposed to?"

"I don't think I can do it, Sasha." A single tear dropped onto the bare skin of his chest. "I don't think I can give this up. I love you too much."

"That's the problem, isn't it? We've always loved each other too much." He didn't have a solution, so he didn't offer her false hope. What he did have was two more hours to make the memories that would have to last them a life time. He made sure not to squander them.

o-O-o

It was still dark when she left. Most of the reporters had gone home for the night, and the few that were still at the hotel were asleep on the front stairs. Nobody noticed her slipping out the back, and it was easy once she got back onto campus. TC security had kicked them all off the property, so she could walk in the open without risk. She didn't go back to the dorms. If she did she'd have to explain where she'd been. She went to the hospital instead.

She knew the nurse on duty from her previous visits, so she didn't get hassled about visiting hours. She sat down in the chair beside Lauren's bed and let herself sleep.

She woke when Lauren threw a pillow at her head. All things considered, Payson preferred waking because of the shift in Sasha's breathing beneath her.

"What are you doing here?" Lauren was never one for small talk.

What was she doing there? She couldn't expect Lauren to listen to her problems and sympathize. She was having heart surgery later that day. She had more than enough worries of her own. But still, this is where she wanted to be.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I would just rather be here with you than anywhere else."

Lauren reached her hand out and Payson took it without thought. "Tell me about Sasha, Pay."

Of course she knew about the video. She was in the hospital, not solitary confinement, but somehow Payson had assumed that she didn't know. "I'm not going to dump my problems on you, Lo. You have more important things to think about."

"Listen, I don't know how it happened," Lauren said, "but at some point you became my best friend. I know I kind of suck at the whole friend thing, but I'm trying, and I don't want to go into surgery knowing that I might have helped you and didn't. Tell me about Sasha."

Payson never made the same mistake twice, so she made sure the door was closed before she spoke. Once she started it was like a dam broke inside of her and it all poured out. She told Lauren everything, how she'd fallen in love with Sasha and the day she realized he felt the same way—"He was looking at me the same way I looked at him, like I was the entire world."—then their unspoken agreement to ignore it and her efforts to get over him with Max, and how that breakup had brought back all of the rejection she felt when Sasha pushed her away.

"And then I fell in love with Rigo," she continued, "and I thought _finally_ I was moving on. He makes me happy, you know? And we're so good together, but then Sasha heard us talking about it and it messed everything up, because he was hurt enough that he actually mentioned it. We never acknowledged it, not once in all that time, but talking about it just brought everything back."

She told Lauren about the confusion and guilt she'd felt the night she'd slept in the hospital with her, and how she'd struggled with her feelings that whole day until the video aired on the news. She gave her all the details of Wendy's betrayal, the endless meetings she and Sasha had been forced to sit though, and her conversation with Rigo.

"I was so confused, Lauren. I didn't know what to do, but I chose. I chose Rigo. I was going to give up Sasha, but I just wanted to say goodbye first so I snuck out and went to his hotel. I don't know what I was thinking, I don't even know if I _was_ thinking, but we slept together. I just wanted one night, one night to remember before we were done for good, and it was wonderful, the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me, and I _can't _give it up. But we don't have a choice. Nothing's changed, we can't be together, but I can't be with Rigo now either, not when I feel this way about Sasha."

She finally came to a halt from her rambling speech, and she sat with her chest heaving while she waited for some kind of response from Lauren. None came.

"Lo?"

"I'm sorry," he friend said. "I know this isn't the right thing to be thinking right now, but I'm just stuck on the part where you slept with two different guys over the course of three days."

There was a loaded pause before a horrified cry tore from her lips. "Oh my God, I'm a slut!"

Lauren laughed. She slapped her hand over her mouth and laughed again. Then the absurdity of the situation struck Payson and she laughed too. Both girls dissolved into hysterical laughter which morphed into hysterical sobs on her part. She laid her head in Lauren's lap and cried, not knowing or caring how long they stayed that way, but when her tears stopped and her breath evened out she didn't feel quite so confused.

Lauren was stroking her fingers through Payson's hair. It was comforting. "I used to be jealous of you and Sasha," she said. "I thought the reason he spent so much time with you was because he thought that you were a better gymnast than Kaylie and me. It never occurred to me that he was in love with you."

She was quiet for a long time, just letting Payson calm down. When she spoke again her words surprised Payson. "It must have been so hard for him, spending all that time with you and never being able to say how he felt."

Payson sat up and used a Kleenex to dry her face. "I don't know what to do," she rasped.

Again, Lauren surprised her. "My whole life, what I've wished for more than anything else, even more than an Olympic medal, was for someone to love me the way Sasha loves you."

"You're saying I should fight for him."

"I don't have to say it, Payson."

o-O-o

Morning practice was awkward but uneventful. The other girls stared at her. Coach Mac told her to stop sleeping in the hospital without telling him first. She wasn't sure how he knew about that, but she didn't ask. She didn't want to risk him finding out that she _hadn't_ slept at the hospital the night before.

She talked to Rigo during lunch. They locked the door to his dorm room and she sat on his bed. He sat on a chair. He already knew what her decision was.

"I slept with Sasha." She trusted him not to repeat that. He deserved the whole truth.

"Why?"

"It was supposed to be a goodbye. I chose you. I just wanted one night with Sasha, for us to say goodbye to each other."

He heard what she wasn't saying. "But that's not how it turned out. It wasn't a goodbye."

"It was," she said, trying to ignore the pain in her chest when she said it. She wanted to believe Lauren, but she couldn't risk that kind of heartbreak. "Just not in the way I intended. I can't be with him, but I can't be with you either. Not knowing how I feel about him."

"I love you Payson. I know I never said it, but I do."

A tear slid down her cheek. "I love you, too. Just not as much as I love him."

Before he left he opened his laptop and handed it to her. She didn't look until he was gone.

It was several tabs of webpages, all devoted to her and Sasha. All themed with Romeo and Juliet. They had sprung up overnight. People had collected pictures of them together at competitions, stills of the kiss, the video from the gym. It was on YouTube and already had over a million hits. The comments were mixed. There were people who called Sasha a pervert and her a slut, and some who voiced a more moderate disapproval, but there were also a surprising number of people who supported a relationship between her and Sasha. At least half, maybe more. The media had turned them into martyrs.

Rigo gave her a gift by showing this to her. More than ever before, she knew what a good man he was. He deserved so much better than she could give him.

o-O-o

Coach Macintyre let her and Kaylie out of practice early so they could be there for Lauren's surgery. Sasha was there too.

They talked to her just before the doctors took her back to the operating room. They all cried, and Lauren broke the somber moment by drolly asking if Payson needed heart surgery, too.

There was a small smile on Payson's face when she assured her friend that no, she didn't need heart surgery. Her heart was just fine.

She sat by Sasha in the waiting room and held his hand. He didn't question it and Steve and Kaylie didn't comment on it.

About an hour in Steve went to get coffee. Kaylie took one look at them and hurried to follow Lauren's dad, giving them some privacy. She was alone with Sasha for the first time since she left his room that morning.

She shifted in her chair to look at him and said, "Lauren thinks we should fight for each other."

"And what do you think?"

She answered him with a kiss. "I love you, Sasha Belov," she whispered. "I'm willing to take a chance on us. Are you?"

He stroked his fingers down her cheek, just like he had that night in the gym. "People will judge us," he said. It wasn't a no; he was just stating the facts.

"But not everyone. There are people who want us to be together." It was the driving force behind her decision. 'Wrong' in this case was a social convention, so if the world approved, or at least a large part of them did, then their relationship wasn't wrong.

"The NGO will disapprove."

"They don't have to know yet. We don't have to jump head first into this," she assured him. "We'll take it slow. We've pretended like this wasn't there for so long that we need time to build it back up. We need to re-learn each other."

He gave her his last reservation. "Your parents will hate me."

"Probably." She wished it wasn't true, but they wouldn't be happy. She and Sasha had kept so many secrets from them that it would take a long time to regain their trust. "But it won't last forever. Once they see how much we love each other, they'll come around."

"You're sure you want this?" He asked one more time.

"I'm sure."

He laid his forehead against hers. "Then I love you, too, Payson Keeler. And I'm willing to take a chance."

o-O-o

She spent one more night with him. Kaylie covered for her while she sneaked away, and they spent a single night reveling in each other before they hit the reset button. She left before dawn, and the next time they saw each other they went back to the beginning. Back to shy flirting and holding hands under the table. Back to talking for hours on end. Back to kisses stolen at the end of the night.

The media never stopped hounding them. They followed Rigo around and tried to goad him into saying something, but he never did. He never even confirmed that he and Payson broke up. When the reporters failed with him, they tried to get a comment out of anyone and everyone at the TC, but the ones in the know kept their mouths shut. The only thing they found out was that Sasha visited Colorado Springs every Sunday while the girls were at the Training Center, but that was reasonable considering that one of his star gymnasts just had heart surgery.

Her dad punched Sasha. They still weren't speaking, but it was temporary. He would come around eventually. Her mom sighed a lot. Payson never did figure out that particular reaction.

Rigo was in the stands when she made the Olympic team. He smiled at her once across the room and then turned around and left. It was the last time she ever saw him. It hurt more than a little, but when Sasha swept her into a hug she knew she'd made the right choice.

When she won Olympic Gold they stopped hiding. She kissed him in the middle of a sea of reporters.

It turned out that they weren't Romeo and Juliet after all, because they got their happy ending.

* * *

A/N: Okay, so how much do your teeth hurt now? Wasn't this just so sugary that it made you sick?

Review and let me know what you think, whether it made you feel better like it did for me or you thought it was waaay too sappy. I want to know either way :)


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